Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

Above it all, the purple sky boiled and thrashed and spat electric ribbons.

At ground level, Colonel Colm Corbec of the Tanith First-and-Only led his squad down the ramp of the troop-ship and into the firezone. To either side, he could see lines of ships disgorging their troops into the field, a tide of men ten thousand strong.

They reached the first line of cover – a punctured length of pipeline running along rusted pylons – and dropped down.

Corbec took a look each way and keyed in his micro-bead comm link. 'Corbec to squad. Sound off.'

Voices chatted back along the link, responding.

By Corbec's side, Trooper Larkin was cradling his lasgun and looking up at the sky with trembling fear.

'Oh, this is bad,' he murmured. 'Psyker madness, very bad. We may think we had it hard at Voltis Watergate or Blackshard deadzone, but they'll seem like a stroll round the garden next to this… '

'Larks!' Corbec hissed. 'For Feth's sake, shut up! Haven't you never heard of morale?'

Larkin turned his bony, weasel face to his senior officer and old friend in genuine surprise. 'It's okay, colonel!' he insisted. 'I didn't have me comm link turned on! Nobody heard!'

Corbec grimaced. 'I heard, and you're scaring the crap out of me.'

They all ducked down as a swathe of autocannon fire chewed across the lines. Someone a few hundred metres away started screaming. They could hear the piercing shrieks over the roar of the storm and the landing troop-ships and the bombardment.

Just.

'Where's the commissar?' Corbec growled. 'He insisted he was going to lead us in.'

'If he ain't landed, he ain't coming,' Larkin said, looking up at the sky. 'We were the last few to make it through before that happened.'

Next to Larkin, Trooper Raglon, the squad's communications officer, looked up from the powerful voxcaster set. 'No contact from the commissar's dropcraft, sir. I've been scanning the orbital traffic and the Navy band, colonel. This filthy psyker storm took out a whole heap of troop-ships. They're still counting the crash fires. We was lucky we got down before it really started.'

Corbec shivered. He didn't feel lucky.

Raglon went on: 'Our psykers upstairs are trying to break the storm, but…'

'But what?'

'It looks pretty certain the commissar's troop-ship was one of those vaporised in the storm.'

Corbec growled something indistinct. He felt cold, and could see the look on the faces of his men as the word spread down the line.

Corbec lifted his lasgun and keyed up his micro-bead. He had to rally them fast, get them moving. 'What are you waiting for?' he bawled. 'Diamond formation fire-team spread! Double time! Fire at will! Advance! For the memory of Tanith! Advance!'

Brin Milo woke up.

He was upside down, blind, suspended painfully from his restraint rig, his ribs bruised blue and a taste of blood in his mouth.

But – unless someone was about to play a really nasty trick on him – he was alive.

He could hear… very little. The trickle and patter of falling water. A creaking. Someone moaning softly.

There was a loud bang and light flared into his dark-accustomed eyes. He smelled thermite and realised someone had just ejected the emergency hull-plates using the explosive bolts. Daylight – thin, green, wet daylight – streamed in.

Bragg's huge face swam up in front of Milo's, upside down.

'Hang on, Brinny-boy,' Bragg said softly. 'Soon have you down.' He started rattling the restraints and slamming the lock handle back and forth.

The restraints abruptly stopped restraining and Milo uttered a little yelp as he dropped two and a half metres onto the sloping roof of the troop-ship.

'Sorry,' Bragg said, helping him up. 'You hurt, lad?'

Milo shook his head. 'Where are we?' he asked.

Bragg paused as if he was thinking about this carefully, Then, with deliberation, he said 'We're earlobe deep in doo-doo.'

The troop-ship, now just a crumpled sleeve of metal, had impacted at a steep angle on its roof.

Milo climbed down and gazed back up at the mangled wreck. What amazed him only slightly less than the fact he was still alive, was that they had come down in what appeared to be a jungle. Enormous pinkish trees that looked like swollen, magnified root vegetables, formed a dense forest of flaccid trunks around them. The huge growths were strung with thick ropey vines, creepers and flowering tendrils, and thorny fern and horsetail covered the moist, steaming ground. Everything was green, as all light – except for a single clear shaft which slanted down through the trees where the troop-ship had burst through – was filtered by the dense canopy of foliage above their heads. It was humid, and sticky, and sappy water dripped from the trees. There was a sweet stink of fungoid flowers.

Bragg clambered down from the wreck, and joined the boy. A dozen other Ghosts had clambered out and were sat down or leaning against trees, waiting for spinning heads and ringing ears to clear. All had minor cuts and scrapes, except Trooper Obel who lay on a makeshift stretcher, his chest bloody and torn. Corporal Meryn had taken charge. He and Caffran were trying to open other emergency hatches to look for more survivors.

Milo saw Rawne had survived. The major stood to one side with a tall, pale Ghost called I'eygor, who served as his aide.

'I didn't know there were any jungles on this world,' Milo said.

'Me neither,' Bragg answered. He was catching and piling equipment packs Meryn was tossing down from the side of the wreck. 'Actually, I didn't even know what this world was called.'

Milo found Rawne by his side.

'We're in a forest hollow,' Rawne said. 'The surface of Caligula is barren pumice, but it's punctured in many places by deep rift basins, many of them old craters or volcanic sinks. The cities are built down into the largest of them, but others sustain microclimates wet enough for these forests. I think some of them were actually farmed… before the fething enemy came in.'

'So… where are we?' I'eygor asked.

Rawne rubbed his throat, thoughtful. 'We've come down a good way off target. I think there were some forest calderas north of Nero. On the wrong side of the lines.'

I'eygor swore.

'I think the major is correct,' said a voice.

Gaunt appeared, sliding down from a side vent in the punctured hull. He was tattered and bruised, with blood soaking the shoulder and side of his tunic under his coat. Meryn hurried over to him to assist.

'Not me,' Gaunt said, waving him off. 'The co-pilot's alive and he needs to be cut free.'

'It's a miracle anyone got out of that front end,' Meryn said with a whistle.

Gaunt crossed to Milo, Rawne and the others.

'Report, major,' he said.

'Unless we find anyone else alive in there, we've got twelve able-bodied men, plus yourself, the boy Milo and the co-pilot. Minor injuries all round, though Trooper Grogan has a broken arm. But he can walk. Obel has chest injuries. Pretty bad. Brennan is inside. He's a real mess and pinned, but he's alive. The rest are pulp.'

Rawne looked up at the wreck. 'Lucky shot got us, I guess. Missile—'

'Psykers!' Gaunt growled. 'They threw some freakshow storm up. Smashed us out of the sky.'

Everyone fell silent at the thought. Fear prickled them. Some looked away, uneasy and shaken.

Gaunt crossed to the pile of equipment packs Bragg and Caffran were offloading and opened a compact carry-box. Out of this he slid a topolabe from its cushioned slot and held it up by the knurled handgrip. The small brass machine whirred and the concentric dials span and clicked as the gravimetric gyros turned in the glass bubble of inert gas.